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1.You could drill the lock out.
2. Cut a hole in the case (easily repaired with perspex/aluminium sheet).
3. Take it to a locksmith an get him to open it for you & supply a spare key.
4. Use a lot of patience and a big box of 3.5" floppies (look for a product called HjSplit to handle the big files)
5. Note the serial number (and lock number if there is one) and get a spare key from the manufacturer.
6. Use a null modem cable, usually connecting two serial ports.
7. Use an external CD RW drive connected to a parallel or serial port.

Whatever you do is going to cost you money. I guess it all depends what you want to do with the old machine afterwards.

Cheers

If you cannot do someone any good: don't do them any harm....
As long as you did this to one of these, the least of my little ones............you did it unto Me.
What profiteth a man if he gains the entire World at the expense of his immortal soul?

You could very nicely ask the admin of the machine to give you the key so you could place a root-kit on the stand-alone machine. Or maybe it is just games you want to run on a security systems' interface because you are a rent-a-cop and need something to do during those long night shifts ??

Am I being too paranoid? Is it actually your machine?
( nihil beat me to this one ) Try a drill on the lock. Then you won't have to worry about the lost key any more.

If it is your machine, what operating system is it running? What type of security measures were taken to secure it, ( which, if it was your machine you could undo ).

Or are you looking for ideas on how someone might break the security of your machine?

Well, as said here many times before, if someone has physical access to your machine the security can be broken. It boggles my mind some of the things I've seen people do and the imagination it took to come up with some of this stuff. The best you can hope for is that they will leave tell-tail signs ( like a drilled lock or broken case, changed bios password, etc. )

If it not your box, stay out of it!

" And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be" --Miguel Cervantes

I had the same thoughts as you at first, then read evil_spirit's post a bit more carefully. The machine has no Network Card or modem, so it is definately stand alone. I don't know what good a root kit would have on a stand alone device? a keylogger perhaps? but you could load that through the floppy drive or CD?

It sounds like an old ex-corporate type machine, particularly as it has no USB ports.

I remember asking the Administrator for the key once............I was given a box with around 2000 of them in it and told to help myself That one I took to the local locksmith, who charged £5.

I do remember when virtually all corporate kit came with a lock, and people did lock them. 2 or 3 office/desk moves later and the keys were lost (apart from the 2000 in the cardboard box ) A real problem to install upgrades.

The reason for locking these machines was to prevent theft of the memory strips...........it was a common crime, as 8Mb cost about £120, serious money in those days. People would actually get jobs as part time office cleaners to do this!

Also the question was how to copy data HDD to HDD, not how to get into the case, so I felt that this wasn't an attempt to circumvent power up security etc. If the data should not be copied, it should be protected anyway, and you could always get stuff the size of the password file out on a floppy, if it were not. I am prepared to believe that the lock was only mentioned so we did not suggest taking out the HDD and temporarily connecting it as the "D" drive of the other machine.

I still go for borrowing an external CD RW or even a tape drive, or using a null modem cable. EDIT : An external Iomega Zip drive or LS120 drive would also work?

BTW I forgot the one ounce of C4 and a hundred yards of command wire

Cheers

If you cannot do someone any good: don't do them any harm....
As long as you did this to one of these, the least of my little ones............you did it unto Me.
What profiteth a man if he gains the entire World at the expense of his immortal soul?

nihil... except I think an ounce of C4 would trash the box... or to put it another way

'you're only supposed to blow the blahdy doors off'

Evil_spirit... if there is a serial port or parallel port - the easiest thing to do would be get either some null modem cable (for the serial port) or bidirectional cable (for the parallel port) and hook up the two computers that way.... as nihil has already suggested (attaching a CD-R will just be hassle unless you already have one). It will be slow but it does work.

How about access anytime they can stand in front of the keyboard, without anyone knowing. How else would they retrieve the data from a keylogger ?

The reason for locking these machines was to prevent theft of the memory strips...........it was a common crime, as 8Mb cost about £120, serious money in those days. People would actually get jobs as part time office cleaners to do this!

I don't know what £120 is equal to, but I remember paying $200 for 1 meg of SIPPs.
But if the box can be opened, in most cases the CMOS can be reset and thus defeat the bios password. ( as well as remove the hard drive , etc. ) When was the last time you went around and checked the integrity of the bios passwords on all your machines? There are too many M$ patches to test and deploy to worry about that stuff.

At work I see all the time people trying to "customize" a machine to fit their personal preferences, without regard or understanding of the consequences.

If the BIOS is not passworded and one has access to the OS, one can use a serial port, parallel port, or floppy to
copy info, and if one has access to the case as well, can either remove the hard drive temporarily
or install a cd ( does the box have a CD?? )

That goes back to my original suspicions. Either evil_spirit is a noob ( but he has been registered since Jan 2003 so he should know better ) or he is purposely leaving out info necessary to give correct, concise advice.

My advise, thus, still stands.

IF IT IS NOT YOUR BOX, STAY OUT OF IT!

" And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be" --Miguel Cervantes

You are obviously a seasoned operator on the sysadmin and support side?

I agree 200% plus sales tax on your comment:IF IT IS NOT YOUR BOX, STAY OUT OF IT!

Your comment on root kits is interesting...I always associated them with *nix ? not windoze

I usualy apply an exchange rate of £1(GBP) = $1 (USD) for IT costs............you guys get it easy, and your gas is cheaper At the time I was talking about you might say $216(USD)

One of the finest moments in my somewhat pathetic life was when I walked in the restaurant for the IT Department Christmas bash, and was hijacked by two guys from Sysadmin/Tech. Support to sit on their row of tables. For an applications development/project management guy that was some honour?

I used to help out because I had a better "bedside manner" and could handle the "user feedback"

I had five (5) units in my room!......guess that I was a glutton for punishment?

Good Luck and God Bless

Johnno

If you cannot do someone any good: don't do them any harm....
As long as you did this to one of these, the least of my little ones............you did it unto Me.
What profiteth a man if he gains the entire World at the expense of his immortal soul?

I keep a set of cables from my Traveling Software's Laplink Pro kit in the tool room. Very handy when you run into this kind of thing. The cables are serial or parallel and can be used effectively to mount a stubborn older system to a newer box and copy files.

Alternatively, a half-chicklets-size piece of C4 with a mini-cap (derived from a 30.06 primer) wired with a couple strands from CAT5, will take the lock out. The AAA battery from my Palm will set off the cap. Quiet and not much noise or smoke.

Once opened, then the HDD can be removed and slaved to the target machine.

'Course, access to the supplies mentioned above are limited, so the Laplink cables would be the more logical choice.